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Saturday, 28 June 2014

After seeing a photo of a mud crab on Thai Siam's Facebook page I asked the owner, Anna, if she would let me know when they got more in. I love mud crab and it had been far too long since the last time I had eaten it.

I received a phone call from Anna letting me know that they had mud crab in stock. I made a booking for Saturday night and waited with great anticipation for my mud crab meal.

When Lam came out with the crabs I almost swooned. Look at those huge crabs full of succulent crab meat!

The crab meat was as sweet and flavoursome as I had hoped. I had the mud crab cooked fried in salt and pepper; hubby's crab was cooked with ginger and shallots. I tasted a bit of each and I preferred the salt and pepper. I enjoyed every last morsel and had so much fun prying out the flesh. Hubby loved his crab and said that it was the most delicious since the one he had eaten in Penang. That's high praise from him.

Hubby came home with a jar of Taylor's Aioli one day and I just love the flavour. The jar says that it is delicious with fish and chicken but there are so many combinations it works with. My favourite of late is ham, cheese, tomato and aioli. Yumm! A great alternative to butter on sandwiches or as a dip with vegetables.

A visit to Red Bay Brewery in Cleveland, QLD Australia. A micro-brewery that allows you to brew up your own beer and bottle it. They offered a tour and tasting day on Groupon and my husband and I enjoyed getting to know our way around the brewery and then the tasting afterwards.

[ Red Bay Brewery - tasting area and bottling area ]

[ Brew kettles ]

[ Lager - wheat - dark ]

[ Water lines - the water comes from Stradbroke Island ]

[ Crystal Malt ]

[Fridge full of ingredients ]

[ Ingredients ]

[ Belgian candi syrup ]

[ Yellow malt - Carra malt - black malt - chocolate malt ]

[ Orange ]

[ Barrels of customers who are brewing their beer ]

[ Beer brewing ]

[ Customer's beer brewing ]

[ Finished result - the keg ]

Now onto the tasting

[ Pear cider ]

[ Wilder Heffe ]

[ Wilder Heffe ]

[ Vanilla Pub Ale ]

[ Skinny Goat ]

[ English Bitter ]

[ Ginger Beer ]

[ Four men light ]

[ Six of the beers (and cider) we tasted ]

And onto the bottling

[ Bottles draining ]

I didn't take any photos of the bottling process. We washed bottles and put them on the drainers to dry. We then filled the bottles and capped them, placing them into a cardboard box to take home.